Don't suffer from snow envy. Create your own only-in-L.A. sandman at the beach this weekend.

If you’re looking for a new post-holiday family tradition, the National Park Service has a hot winter tip for you:

Learn how to build a sand snowman at Leo Carrillo State Beach this Saturday, January 7, at 11 a.m.

“Families should come out together,” suggests ranger Razsa Cruz, who’ll be leading the first-ever workshop. The program is free, but there is a charge for parking in the main beach parking lot, where participants will assemble.

In addition to teaching children and families about our Mediterranean eco-system, there’s another message at work:

“Even if we don’t have snow, we can have the imagination to do other things,” Cruz says.

Posted 1/5/12

If you haven't had a chance to view the "Now Dig This!" exhibit yet, you can check it out this weekend for free.

A weekend of festivities marks the finale of the UCLA Hammer Museum’s exhibit featuring influential local African American art from years gone by.

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980 includes 140 works that were created against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and during a period of deep cultural change. Featured artists include Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Samella Lewis and Suzanne Jackson.

Admission is free this weekend, January 6 through January 8. On Friday at 7 p.m., the celebration begins with late night viewing and a DJ set from MC Lyte. Saturday features family art-making activities and workshops with contemporary artists, starting at 11 a.m. On Sunday at 2 p.m., exhibit curator Kellie Jones and her father, beat writer and activist Amiri Baraka, will discuss Jones’ most recent book on creating art across the generations. A book signing will follow.

The Hammer Museum is located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd in Westwood. Hours and directions are available on the website, and three-hour parking is available beneath the building for $3.

Posted 1/4/12

First it was sugar in soft drinks. Now even bigger community health plans are afoot in 2012.

The new year is off and running in Los Angeles County—not to mention bicycling, walking and watching what it eats.

January, the traditional kickoff month for diets and self-improvement regimes of every kind, promises to bring some healthy developments of the public policy variety to Los Angeles County.

On January 11, the Regional Planning Commission is scheduled to vote on the county’s first updated bicycle master plan in more than three and a half decades. The plan is expected to expand the county’s network of bikeways and, by unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors, also to include cutting-edge design proposals for making cycling safer and more enjoyable throughout the region.

Then, on January 24, the Board of Supervisors will take up a proposed Healthy Design Ordinance, aimed at turning car-centric, fast-food-eating Southern California into a more walkable, bikeable and garden-filled place.

Meanwhile at the Department of Public Health, this year’s anti-smoking and anti-obesity efforts will be rolled into the county’s new Choose Health L.A. campaign. Funded for the past two years by federal stimulus grants and now by health care reform funds, those projects have sought to improve health, not by targeting specific diseases, but by teaming up with cities, community groups and school districts to get at the root causes of chronic ailments such as heart disease and diabetes.

Last year’s successes included a wave of local smoking bans in cities throughout L.A. County and a provocative ad campaign underscoring the sugar content in soft drinks. The federal grant money has also helped lay the groundwork for the master bike plan and the Healthy Design Ordinance.

Next up: food stamps at farmers’ markets, a grassroots push for smoke-free apartment complexes, teamwork with city attorneys to enforce laws against cigarette sales to minors, and work with hospitals to make it easier for new mothers to breastfeed.

Paul Simon, who heads the Department of Public Health’s Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, says the initiatives are the fruit of an ongoing effort to create an infrastructure of good health in Greater Los Angeles.

“In many of our communities, people want to make healthier choices but have a hard time doing it,” says Simon. “Especially in lower income districts where people want to be physically active, but can’t bike or jog or go out without worrying about violence. Or where the landscape is dominated by these packaged food products jammed with calories. If you set out to design a community to get really high rates of obesity, the community you’d design wouldn’t be far from the communities we’re living in now.”

The Healthy Design Ordinance would mandate wider sidewalks and shadier landscaping in the county, increase bike parking, simplify permitting for community gardens and farmers’ markets and require thru-ways in dead-end cul-de-sacs so that pedestrians and bicyclists can more easily get to shopping, recreation areas and schools.

Though it would only apply to new construction and major renovations in unincorporated areas, its effects, like those of the bike plan, are expected to influence surrounding cities—and to create a healthier landscape for years to come.

Posted 1/4/12

Reserve Sheriff Shervin Lalezary.

Every now and then, a crime spree spreads through our communities that it is particularly hard to fathom, so senseless and random that it catches us off guard, even in a region that, sadly, is no stranger to crime.

During four days over the New Year’s holiday, we were caught in one of those moments as the Westside, West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley were unnerved by an arsonist whose motives are still to be discerned. Dozens of residential buildings and many more dozens of cars were torched. Our communities were terrorized as the arsonist lit one fire after another under the cover of darkness.

I live in one of those communities. One fire occurred less than four blocks from my home. The steady drone of sirens in my neighborhood and beyond was evidence of the mayhem’s sweep.

Throughout the night, families took turns keeping watch. Others took to Twitter with updates. Some fought fires with garden hoses. As we so often do in times of trouble, neighbors took care of neighbors and strangers joined forces.

As we’ve come to expect, our public safety organizations once again rose to the occasion. In what felt like an eternity but was just four days, a suspect was apprehended, arrested and criminally charged—a testament to the collective work of agencies operating in “unified command.” The LAPD, the L.A. County Sheriff, the city and county Fire Departments and the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unit checked their agency seals at the door and worked as one team.

Although several millions of dollars in property damage occurred, no one was killed or injured. Since the suspect’s arrest, the fires have stopped. And for that, we owe an especially big thanks to a grateful immigrant named Shervin Lalezary.

A reserve deputy for the Sheriff’s Department, Lalezary was on just his fourth shift as a $1-per-year volunteer. He was patrolling Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood when he spotted and pulled over a minivan that reportedly was being driven by the alleged arsonist, who’d soon be taken into custody.

Lalezary came here from Iran as a child after the Ayatullah Khomeini revolution in 1979. He studied hard, went to law school and is now a successful real estate attorney practicing in Los Angeles. But personal success was not enough for him. Lalezary says he was determined to give back to the community that welcomed him as an immigrant. Through the sheriff’s reserve program, Lalezary found his way to contribute. Today, we’re all beneficiaries of his courage and commitment.

Los Angeles has a lot for which to be thankful as we begin the new year. So let me wish you a happy, healthy and peaceful one, indeed.

Posted 1/3/12